Beth Robert earns new role at IHR

The Institute for Human Resources is now able to extend its psychiatric services with the addition of Beth Robert, APN.

Robert has been an employee with IHR for nearly 12 years and has completed her nurse practitioner degree, specializing in psychiatric mental health nursing. Before, she had the title of nurse case manager.

"Previously, I would meet with clients and help them with their medications, assess side effects or any problems they may have and work closely with the psychiatrists here to help provide care," she said. "My new role is a psychiatric nurse practitioner, so I basically get referrals from our therapists here for clients for medication management. I meet with clients and mainly prescribe psychotropic medications to help with their illness."

Joe Vaughan, executive director for IHR, said that with the addition of Robert to the lineup, availability has significantly expanded for clients.

"Before, you could only see a psychiatrist, for example, on a Thursday or a Friday from, 8 a.m. to 4 p.m. Now, with Beth being here 40 hours a week, she's absorbed most of Dr. Damera's (a former psychiatrist at IHR) previous clients and she is also taking on new ones," he explained. "The availability for someone to come in for psychiatric services for medication has greatly increased. Even though we've lost a psychiatrist, we've still increased our psychiatric hours by 138 hours a month, which is pretty good."

Robert, who is from Fairbury and has three children, decided to continue her education for multiple reasons.

"A lot of factors went into it. One was the fact that I have been a nurse for 20 years, and in this area, we're underserved, not only in psychiatry, but also in primary care. I just felt that there were programs available to become a psych nurse practitioner and I just felt that if I could become that, we could serve this community a lot better and more efficient," she explained. "Now, the amount of people I can see is a lot more and I just feel we can give a lot better care to the community. I always wanted to further my career and it was now or never. I'm glad I did."

Vaughan gives credit to the former executive director of IHR for Robert taking over the position.

"This was Joe Ronaldson's vision before he left. He invested some of the agency training money to help send Beth back to school because he knew, eventually a nurse practitioner's role would be more important than even a psychiatrist," he said.

Robert says she explains to clients exactly what her job entails.

"Not a lot of people know what a nurse practitioner is, so one of the first things I tell clients is what my role is. The difference between a nurse practitioner and a registered nurse is I have the ability to prescribe medication. With my training, I specialized in the psychiatric component, so I can complete psychiatric evaluations and assessments for psychiatric illnesses. I diagnose as well. I basically do the exact same thing that our psychiatrists do, but I'm not a doctor, I'm a nurse practitioner," she said.

Page 2 of 2 - She also said that she couldn't work at IHR without the assistance of Dr. William Puga.

"I work with Dr. Puga as what is called a collaborative physician. In Illinois, you have to have a collaborative physician with a nurse practitioner. On the more complicated cases, I always have him to fall back on or I run client information past him and ask him what his thoughts are. It's nice to have someone back you up," she said. "I try to work with the primary care providers in the area also, because I think working together is very important, so I try to keep a good relationship and work with them because your health isn't just physical problems, it's also mental, and you need to combine everything."

Robert sees adolescents through adults and says her transition has been smooth.

"A lot of these clients I had already been seeing but now I have a new role. I think it helps the clients that they know me and see a familiar face. I think it helps. I enjoy what I do and I look forward to continuing in the area and this community for many years," she said.

Vaughan also said that Robert's new job is working out for both Robert and the clients at IHR.

"I feel like Beth does a better job with the bedside manner. People seem to respond and I feel that people feel so much more comfortable with her than the formalness of seeing a psychiatrist. We don't want it to be intimidating – we want it to be natural," he said.